Alfonso Cuarón is doing his best Stanley Kubrick impression in his stranded astronaut epic Gravity. David Tennant discusses his sleazy, vampire-fighting magician in Fright Night. Plus why Conan the Barbarian had to be R-rated — and Jean-Claude Van Damme fights aliens!

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Spoilers from this point forward!

Top image from Fright Night.

The Dark Knight Rises

The Patriot-News writer Julia Hatmaker describes her experiences as an extra at the recent filming at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field:

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We had arrived at the stadium at 7:45 a.m., we left the filming at 7 p.m. In between was approximately five hours of cumulative wait time as they rehearsed shots, set up cameras or rigged the stadium with explosives. When we were in action our tasks varied from singing to the national anthem, cheering on Hines Ward during kick-off, and attempting to flee the stadium after 60 explosions went off. The futile attempts to run away were definitely my favorite moments. Evil villain Bane (played by Tom Hardy) infiltrated the stadium with his military-style thugs, who keep the crowd at bay with guns.

Here are set photos from the Pittsburgh filming, courtesy of WENN.com.

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Here are some more set photos. In case you're wondering, that's just a life-sized Batman dummy inside the Batwing, and not a particularly brave and/or foolhardy Christian Bale. [Plum-Oakmont Patch]

And here's a bunch of set videos.

The Avengers

Here are some set photos showing Chris Evans arriving on the Cleveland set, as well as the Grand Central Station set that's been built for filming. [Celebuzz and Comic Book Movie]

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Here's a set video.

Avatar 2 and 3

Sam Worthington offered some more thoughts on what James Cameron is up to. Here's the short version - he really loves working with James Cameron:

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In regards to Avatar, he's writing the bible, at the moment, which is a precursor to Avatar 1 and the whole world, basically. I think it's just to get Jim's mind back into the characters and back into the world. He's told me where he wants to take Avatar 2 and 3, and it's monumental. It's just huge! But, you'd expect nothing less from him. He's not going to start it until he's 100%. I know they're setting up shop down in Manhattan Beach, and when he says jump, I jump.

Is the idea of doing the second and third film back-to-back exciting for you?
I love it! I'd do 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 with Jim. I love working with him. He raises the bar and gives you the courage to jump over it, and he keeps pushing. He changes your life. He hasn't just changed my life, career wise. He's changed my life, as a man, which is nice.

Gravity

Not content to restrict himself to just discussing the five dozen or projects he's currently working on, Guillermo del Toro drops some knowledge about Alfonso Cuarón's astronaut epic starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney:

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"I'm amazed at Alfonso the past few movies because he's completely transformed himself. ['Gravity' is] incredibly well-calculated. Very human, if you know the story. They're] absolutely pushing a new boundary in filmmaking, completely mindblowing. And the way they're making that movie will, I think, forever change certain types of productions."

Del Toro compared what Cuarón is going for to the works of Stanley Kubrick, which I'm guessing means more something along the lines of 2001 than, say, Killer's Kiss. Del Toro also revealed that he had put Cuarón in contact with James Cameron to figure out how to shoot Gravity, and Cameron said the technology didn't exist yet to pull this off and was still at least five years away...and then they went ahead and built the necessary cameras anyway. [MTV Movies Blog]

World War Z

Filming has now moved to Glasgow, which will be standing in as the "war-torn ruins" of Philadelphia for the movie. [Metro]

Fright Night

Here's a sneak peek clip.

Here's an interview with David Tennant, who you may have heard of before. You can also check out a bunch more interviews here.

And here's a music video for Kid Cudi's song from the soundtrack, "No One Believes Me." The video features some clips from the film.

Conan the Barbarian

Director Marcus Nispel explains why the movie had to be R-rated:

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When you deal with a character like Conan, you live and sleep with it for 2 and a half years. When I go to the producers, I gotta tell them who Conan is. Can this be a PG or PG-13 movie? No, it can not. Should Conan be a little nice to the ladies? No, he is misogynistic. Maybe he shouldn't spit and burp when he eats? No. You have to remind them we're not making Prince Charming, but Conan the Barbarian. It's an R-rated idea, and you have to be true to that.

He also discussed original Conan actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's unexpected influence on the finished film:

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There was a scene in Conan that was important to the story - I'm not sure I should be talking about this - that they wanted to cut. Arnold [Schwarzenegger] saw the movie, and he loved it and gave kudos to Jason [Momoa]. He also said, "I couldn't quite tell what the movie was about," so I told them we had to put it back in because of Arnold [Laughs].

UFO

Speaking of downtrodden warriors of the distant past/the 1980s, Jean-Claude Van Damme will reportedly star in an alien invasion movie, which "follows the journey of five friends in the English countryside who fight for survival when an enormous UFO settles above a nearby city." The movie also stars British actor Richard E. Grant, which makes this one of the more awesomely random pairings in movie history. Bianca Bree, Sean Brosnan, and Simon Phillips round out the cast. [Variety]

Doctor Who

Doctor Who Magazine has tweeted a few major tidbits revealed by Steven Moffat and company at a screening last night of "Let's Kill Hitler." Here are the pertinent tweets:

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- Preview clips of rest of season include a Dalek! "It's almost like I lie sometimes!" says Steven.
- More references to older Who eps to come. "It's what I do instead of fun" says Steven.
- "More dark sides of the Doctor to come" says Steven. "But he's still fundamentally a nice man."
- Oh, and a new companion! Yes, confirmed by @steven_moffat tonight! ;)

So then, assuming all these reports are serious - and I suppose that winking emoticon might give one pause - there will be Dalek(s) in series six, and presumably a new companion for season seven. That would seem to strongly imply that Amy and Rory will indeed be leaving the TARDIS at the end of the season, unless Steven Moffat is ready to go full Hartnell (that's the technical Doctor Who term for having three companions in the TARDIS). There are a few more details on the DWM Twitter feed, including a joke about a "Davros/Omega/Rani" team-up which, just in case anyone was wondering, will never, ever happen. Also, "Let's Kill Hitler" will apparently feature "three old companions and a Hand of Fear reference", which I won't even begin to try to puzzle out. [@DWMtweets]

Grains of salt at maximum for this one, but the British tabloid The Daily Star claims episodes twelve and thirteen are titled "Closing Time" and "The Wedding", and that the finale will feature the Doctor getting married - one would assume to River, I suppose - and the Ponds making their farewells. While that final bit is looking decently likely to be true, I'm hugely dubious about all the rest of this, particularly because episode twelve director Steve Hughes has already tweeted, "Don't believe everything you read!" in response to these reports. [Doctor Who Spoilers]

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Actually, you better hold onto some grains of salt for this report as well, because there's some speculation going around that actress Nina Toussaint-White, who is playing a character called Mels in "Let's Kill Hitler", will be the new companion by the start of series seven. The main argument for this appears to be that her name is a lot like Melody Pond's (as well as the misbegotten Sixth and Seventh Doctor companion Mel, as though that's evidence of anything), and so...she must be super significant, I guess? That seems to be the main extent of the reasoning, as well as the fact that other actresses will be playing younger versions of her in the episode. For what it's worth, previous rumors have indicated she's a childhood friend of Rory and Amy, which is supported by the fact that Caitlin Blackwood is back as young Amelia and Ezekiel Wigglesworth has been cast as young Rory. So, yeah, I don't think there's much more to this one, frankly. [Bleeding Cool]

True Blood

Here's a promo for the next episode, "Run!"

The Walking Dead

Series cinematographer David Boyd drops some details about his directorial debut, episode seven:

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Episode 207 is cool in that we see that Andrea, this girl can shoot, man. And then Lori, she's kept her shit together through Rick getting wounded and all that stuff, but she's starting to come apart a little bit and by the end of the episode she and Rick put it all out there. As functional as you can be in the apocalypse, these two are going to be equals.